


Oz Finds G-d

by DWEmma



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29543322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWEmma/pseuds/DWEmma
Summary: Ten years after Oz leaves Sunnydale, he gets to see Willow again, and thank her for the spiritual path she accidentally sent him on.
Relationships: Daniel "Oz" Osbourne & Willow Rosenberg
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Purimgifts 2021





	Oz Finds G-d

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesometimeswarrior](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/gifts).



Oz looked up from his siddur, felt himself grounded and in touch with the world, looked out the window at the full moon, and sighing happily. It had taken ten long years, a lot of fruitless wanderings through much of Asia, chasing after promised cures, but he had finally gotten his human life back. That’s not to say that if he felt like going for a hunt later, that he couldn’t. Well, he couldn’t because he wasn’t in a rural enough area. But the point was that he didn’t have to, and that if he did, he retained enough of his humanity when he did that he wasn’t a danger to more than the local wildlife. That he had come to peace with the wolf inside of him, which lay the monster to rest. 

And to think that it was his refusal to give up that trinket his high school girlfriend gave him when he left for the final time that sent him on the right path. 

***********

When he left her that final time to go galavanting off to Tibet like the 90s guy in a band cliche he had been, though arguably most of them aren’t looking for a cure for their warewolfism, she had given him a hamsa that she had in her wallet. She said something about it being good luck, it of course being the cliche token that every JewPa girl from the 90s clung to, and completely ignorant to the fact that it was clearly made of silver. But she gave it to him in one of those tiny velvet pouches, and that’s where he kept it for years, in an inner zipper pocket of his frame backpack. 

He’d like to pretend he forgot it was there, but when his hands got too close to it he could feel it, feel the silver of it. Why did he keep it? It was probably the only remaining part of his old life left once his Dingos t-shirt fell apart. But maybe it was just the sign he knew he’d need when it was time. 

He took it out at a bar one night in Bangkok to stare it down. He didn’t know if he was staring down his past or staring down his affliction, but he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t have it any more. 

“Shalom aleichem,” said a man who had been sitting next to him, quietly drinking. 

“Sorry, man, English,” Oz said, shrugging. 

“Sorry. American Jew?” The man asked, signaling toward the hamsa and generally toward his red hair. 

“Oh, uh, no. This, uh, I was once in love with a Jewish girl,” he said. 

“You still love this girl?” he asked. 

“No. She doesn’t date men any more, and I don’t do the unrequited thing. I think I’ve kept it for some other reason.”

And that was when he heard about Kabbalistic Magic. And following this man to meet a mystical rabbi in Tel Aviv seemed like a logical next step. Oz was all about following where the path took him. Plus, he was almost out of money and the busking scene in Bangkok was not supported by the government. 

And that was how it happened. That first rabbi sensed the whole wolf thing, and introduced him to another, and another until he found someone who was able to get him to a spiritual place where he could control his changes rather than just suppress them. And a lot of the practice was reading and studying, and Oz dug that. He’d never been a school guy because he didn’t like being told what to study, but it turns out that he was really good at studying when he actually cared what he was learning. After two years living with them, still busking to bring in some money, he decided that it was time to convert to Judaism, to really live this thing to its fullest. So he went through the process of converting. 

****************

And now, ten years since last saw Willow, he was waiting for her to meet with him for a late night cup of tea in London. 

She approached, looking both exactly like herself and nothing like herself. The purple hair was obviously new, but it suited her. She seemed to have a centered calmness in her that he related to: the sort of centered calmness that is earned by learning not to repress evil. (He may have been gone for ten years, but he had heard about the whole effigy of Proserpexa thing, not to mention felt the disturbance in the universe when it was happening.) 

But when she saw him, he saw that nervous/excited Willow face, like flashing back through time. 

“Hey,” she said. 

“Hey,” he answered. 

“Sorry I’m late. Am I late? I got lost. You’d think London would be easier to navigate than it is, but I’m still getting used to it. I was in Cleveland for a long time after the whole, you know, crater thing, and I’ve just only made the move out here, and…”

“It’s cool, Wil. You’re not late,” he smiled, motioning that she should sit. 

“Oh. I’m sorry. I’m just oddly nervous.” 

“You shouldn’t be. Same old Oz,” he smiled. 

“Except you’re all…” she motions at his kippah, swirling her hands around. “...Jewishy, with your yarmulke, and…”

“I am quite Jewishy, yes. I’ve been meaning to thank you. It was the hamsa you gave me before I left that put me on the right path.”

“The what?” 

He smiled and took the charm out of his wallet. The silver didn’t even give him a tingle on his skin anymore unless he chose for it to. 

“I forgot that I...you know I got that at the Magic Box, right?” She looked at him, confused. 

He shrugged, nonplussed. “It did its magic.”

“It didn’t even know it was Jewish. My dad never even sent me to Hebrew school. I’ve been a pagan since...well, no, that was more recent. I was a witch for a long time before I actually learned how to worship the Goddess. But, it’s cool that you found your path or whatever because of it. Maybe I charmed it for you!” she grinned, but not in that hopeful way she might have ten years ago, where her voice would have that strain behind the part where she was kidding, where she was desperately hoping to have had power over something and to connect to him. This time she was just making a gentle joke. 

There was a long pause before both of them requested, “So tell me about your wife,” causing them to laugh. And it was easy from there on in. Easier than it had been since high school. Easier than it was in high school, probably. 

As they went to go their separate ways, Oz smiled at Willow. “If your work ever takes you to Tel Aviv, you should join us for Shabbat. Michal would love to meet you.” 

“Would she?” asked Willow, a little doubtfully, a little aware that her own wife was just a few miles away, and definitely did not want to join them that evening. 

“Why wouldn’t she?” asked Oz, trying to wish the sort of peace he had in his marriage onto Willow’s. 

It was then that Willow noticed the moon, and gasped a little. 

Oz smiled at her his Oz smile, and did the most Oz thing he could do, uttering one word that worked in all its meanings: “Shalom.”


End file.
